²³ But Jesus answered them, saying, “The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. ²⁴ Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. ²⁵ He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. ²⁶ If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor." John 12:23-27

I am so thankful for the word of the Lord beckoning me to come to Him when I am weary. He gives rest like no other. This is a tired day for us and we desperately need Him. There is a song about being desperate for the Lord that I used to hate when I was unsaved and would hear it. Oh, how the Lord has show me as I have walked with Him the truth of that beautiful song!

This is an update on what is going on with Alex and our family. Yesterday, we took him to a place where he can be alone with the Lord, His Word and be ministered to and away from all the distractions here that have kept him from being honest with himself and getting things right with the Lord and how he is living his life. He is not happy to be there right now, but the Lord prepared him for this, and we had the privilege of seeing the mighty hand of the Lord ourselves do this. I wanted to share how Jesus is taking care of our son and how good the Lord is.

Before I start, I want to thank anyone reading who has kept us in prayer. We are close to the 2 year mark when Alex's Pandora's box of drug use got opened, and it's been a rough road. There are so many people who have either walked in Alex's shoes or ours who know the power of the Lord to deliever who have ministered to us. We are so especially grateful for you who have shared your testimony and for the unwaivering support and very sound, Biblical advise, if any has been offered.

Last July-August, Alex hit a new low, which included leaving our home. The Lord has been so good to watch over our son while he has been out in the world, running from the Lord, living his life doing what seems right in his eyes with support from "friends" and their parents to continue in drug abuse and a life headed for the gutter and finding no rest in sin. Praise the Lord that He is so faithful to show us, if we have the eyes to see, that sin is a cruel master and there is no rest in it.

He wore out his welcome with the latest parent harboring him this weekend and begged us to come back home but refused to stop using drugs. Prayerfully, Brian and I decided we would take him where he needed to go, warned him this was what had been decided and told him to come home, and he did.  Living under our roof as a drug addict is not a choice or a compromise that we will ever make. We love Alex too much to not set boundaries that will protect him and then honor them with our actions. We love our other children too much not to protect them from his choices and to show them that we are serious, and it's very ugly up close in ways that I will not be writing about today, but it's the right thing to do. The first moment of peace I have felt in almost two years was when Pastor Jeff from U-Turn prayed over Alex and our family over the phone on Monday when we called to find out if they had room for him. That is the Lord---I felt His presence in a way that I have not through this time in our lives, confirming what He wants to do and His plans for Alex, to give him a future and a hope, if Alex will let go of drugs and hang onto Jesus.

Alex came home Sunday evening with the two tubs we packed his belongings in months ago and a laundry basket. He has sold both of his guitars, his half-stack amp, his i-Pod, anything he had of value, to support his drug habbit. He had applied for food stamps in the last few months, which he received, all while refusing to get a job and work. I would not want anyone to think he spent the money he received from selling his things to feed himself or to pay room and board to the parent of the child who was harboring him. He doesn't hide his drug use and is very open about it with us and what's been going on. He firmly believes marajuana isn't bad for you, is not a drug, should be legalized, that he has no problem, that his life situation is not his fault or the result of his choices, that he is not an addict, but cannot explain why, unless, we helped him, he would not be a homeless, drug addict on the street. And he has said the same about other things he has done. Pray the Lord is able to crack the nut on that for him very quickly. It's very difficult to have that conversation again and again. It's not one that is open for compromise, unless you want to prolong, support and enable an addict. If you are from a family of alcoholism or drug abuse, you are probably very familiar with much of what I am saying and know the destruction it causes. It is not worse to turn the addict over to their choices and turn them out from your home and family. It is the only way they may actually have their life saved and for the Lord to reach them and give them a new life free from it. If you enable, you are part of the problem and the addiction. Enabling can also be called compromising.

Sadly, that story is the same for each of us when it comes to sin. Some of us are just in more comfortable cirumstances than others when it comes to our sin, easier to hide what spiritual condition we are really in. The Lord loves to strip away those things that keep us from Him, and praise the Lord when He does this. It's very painful and it's not very pretty in the fleshly sense, but to our spirit, it's a necessity. I have been through this myself, my husband as well, and our oldest daughter in coming to know the Lord. Prayerfully, folks who do not know Jesus as their Lord and Savior, come to know this truth with less pain than we have, but usually this does not seem to be the case. Just like the Bible says, we like sheep have gone astray and none of us think of the Lord or seek Him. He comes after us and those who are His, they hear His voice and follow Him and will not follow another. There is no contentment following someone or something other than Jesus.

So Monday evening, Alex had made himself a cup of hot tea and was using his cell phone, supplied by his girlfriend's mother, and he dropped it into his tea. My husband regularly fixes cellphones damaged by liquids for people. Alex knows this. But in his anger, Alex destroyed the phone, despite my husband intervening to let him know that he could dry it out and restore the electronics before he destroyed it. That phone has kept him together with this girlfriend. There is no way for me to begin to express the feelings I have about parents who dishonor us by enabling Alex to continue doing to himself what he has been doing. Sigh. The Lord put that phone in his tea and then moved him to destroy it. It was going to be an issue for Alex, a source of stumbling, and the Lord took care of it. Someone who doesn't know the Lord or who doesn't understand Alex and the need for Alex to be stripped completely probably can't see the Lord's hand, but it was all Him. We have been through this before. We were the only ones who knew we were taking him Tuesday morning other than our pastor and the pastors there until we woke the kids up Tuesday and told them what we were doing. But the Lord knew and He took care of it. We did absolutely nothing and my husband could and was willing to fix the phone for him. Alex with his own hands, destroyed it. I guess this seems very dramatic to us, maybe not so much as I retell it. But the Lord is good to get rid of those things that keep us from Him.

Isn't the Lord amazing?

So the ranch is in the middle of no where. The grounds and accomodations are very basic and humble. There are chickens and goats to care for, cows come and go. There was a dog. They live a life for 2 months or longer if needed, soley around making disciples of these men who come with wrecked lives where they pray, study the Lord's Word, are taught, work doing all kinds of things to serve others, and when they are ready, move into another phase where they work off the ranch in a job they get themselves while still living there on a different part of the ranch, still being discipled, and eventually off into whatever the Lord has planned for them next.  Many go onto Bible college and then into ministry or missions. All the things that we have been trying to teach Alex they will be teaching him. Alex is very much like the 12 year old that started using drugs and has never matured and cannot right now. That is what addiction does to a person.

I am so exhausted mentally and emotionally to express as I would like to about this, but I wanted to get my thoughts down today, even if a bit raw and disjointed, to point to the Lord Jesus and how good He is and just get some basics out on what happened. I have a very sore throat, probably from the change in weather where we were yesterday, and being in the car, so talking is difficult today and we have church this evening, so I am trying to get my throat back to even be able to have a conversation with someone outside my family out of necessity. :) Please forgive me for a lack of phone calls for a few days and desire to talk while I wait on the Lord to take care of my throat.

The Bible tells us that we are not good, only God is. The goodness available to us to have is from the Lord and belongs to Him alone, avaiable to be imparted to us by His grace and credit given only to Him. This was something that came up yesterday. We are not righteous, He is. Oh, how we fool ourselves into thinking that we alone are good or not that bad, etc. We are fallen and spiritually dead apart from Jesus Christ, and how sad it is when we delude ourselves when we think we actually have life or that our salvation is secure in what we do or that going to a great college or having a perfect home, or whatever we are taking pride in does something for us in the eyes of the Lord. He says His standard is His Son and nothing else will do. I love this. I fell in love with the Lamb of God, Who was willing to go to the cross and pay for my sins when I could not, and it's not a burden on me to do something other than believe Him and follow Him and let Him do the perfecting. How beautiful that the work is done. He did it. It's not a bad or unfortunate thing that Alex is where he is because of the Lord's guiding hand. Life is more than what we wear, eating and drinking, our jobs, our homes, even our families. Read Job if that seems strange to think I would say our families and see what the Lord did in the life of this man who loved Him. So important to know the difference between the Blesser and the blessings. The work that matters to the Lord is believing in Jesus Christ. We don't even know the Father without the Son, the Bible tells us. How much needs to be stripped from a life to know this truth? The Lord tells us He is the narrow way and few find it (Him). How do you feel, whoever is reading this, about the Lord stripping away anything that is in the way of you finding Him and walking with Him so that you might not only have eternal life but be a new creation in Him and have an abundant life right now? An abundant life in Christ Jesus will more than likely not involve a huge house and a luxury car but a life of serving others, of humility. We are talking about a God who washed His disciples stinky feet as an example for those who want to be great in His kingdom and then He went to the cross and laid His life down to pay for our sins. Don't think that is only for a drug addict or a adulterer or a murderer. It's for everyone. Jesus died for the sins of all of us. The question that remains is who will believe our report??

My son is stripped down to nothing. The Lord has been faithful in taking care of him so that he can be worked with in His hands. Alex has no where else to go. Thankfully, the Lord has prevented other parents from having the desire to harbor him. The only thing he would have had to get ahold of or connect him to all the destructive friends in his life was destroyed in his own hands; he has the potential to leave there at some point completely free of the old man and old life if he will receive that. There is no computer there (kept at their offices in town), no phone except the cell phones on the pastors, they are close to nothing but one another and the Lord, and the only book allowed is God's Word. It was beautiful. That is beauty that could only be seen through eyes of faith in the Lord, understanding what He is doing in the lives of those who were there. I wonder who is saying to themselves, "Wow, Nicole, that seems so extreme." And I guess that my answer to that question is, "Do you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Savior personally?" Sometimes the Lord needs a radical situation to perform a radical work, apart from distraction and the world, separated to Himself alone. What does He need to do in each of our lives, even those of us who belong to Him, so that we can hear Him?

Larry, one of the guys running things, explained to my son and I as we were walking to the bunk house, that this is not a rehab. It's a place of restoration and they do not rehab the flesh, they crucify it, exactly as the Bible commands us to do. When guys have trouble with breaking rules, one of the disciplines is digging a hole. It's symbolic for the idea of where the old man needs to go---- crucified and in need of burying. The ground there is hard. But this is the reason for the verse on my heart today above. I pray that Alex puts the old man on the cross and in the grave that he may be resurrected into the newness of life in Jesus Christ for what He has for Him, free of the bondage of sin, and able to produce much for the Lord. What a beautiful thing the Lord shows us first in what He did and that we are to follow Him in it.

If you would like to keep Alex and us in prayer, please pray for the Lord to put the desire in Alex's heart to be exactly where he is, to seek the Lord earnestly with all his heart, and for the Lord to answer and work mightily. Pray for us to have continued peace and strength from the Lord and for His provision for our family and to protect the hearts and minds of the other kids. Please pray for the Lord to fill the men who are ministering to Alex overflowing with His Spirit and for the Lord to be glorified in all this.

I pray that anyone who does not know Jesus Christ as their Savior and their Lord might know Him and not allow the things of this life, and there are so many, hinder them from surrendering to Him. I am thanking the Lord today that He sees, hears and knows. What an incredible comfort. Amen.
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